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"...Yes there is kicking and punching in Aikido.....In the 1950s/60s all Kenshiro Abbe Sensei's Aikido classes began with 30mins hard kicking and punching exercises. and 200 pushups on the back of the wrists..."

There are kicks (at least one iirc) in "Budo Renshu", also punches and kicks in '50s manuals like the ones published by Minoru Mochizuki and by Tadashi Abe (in this one there are headbutts in the clinch too).

"...Yes there is kicking and punching in Aikido.....In the 1950s/60s all Kenshiro Abbe Sensei's Aikido classes began with 30mins hard kicking and punching exercises. and 200 pushups on the back of the wrists..."

wow, what happened to Aikido? Old Aikido sounds a lot like Hapkido.
200's push-up's pretty good, but on wrists! cool.

Hi Chris,

my teacher was there, and was Abbe Sensei's first Aikido student in 1955. He still sometimes refers back to the hard training that he went through. I'm not sure that every class was so focussed on hard kicking and punching exercises (I'll ask him directly next time I see him) on the warm up.

I do know that at 80 years of age with 2 artificial hips and an artificial knee, both of which he puts down to the severity of the practice, he is not so inclined to agree with you that it is cool to wreck the one precious body we have unneccessarily, through overly hard training.

As good as Abbe Sensei was (and from all accounts from those who had first hand experience of him, he was very good). His teaching method was not the best. He left the UK quite unhappy that many in both Judo and aikido did not 'get' what he was trying to teach them. He had his own philosophy "Kyu-shin-do" borne out of his own exposure to and study of multiple arts and his own spiritual leanings. Not many who trained with him got anywhere near incorporating this into their practice. Some even went off and started attaching the name to an art itself. Which is just plain wrong, but I'm sure that it happens all the time in many different spheres of endeavour.

Anyway, teaching and training methods change over time, hopefully they get better, but not always.

Secondly, as I was taught, low kicking was part and parcel of practice. The main reason it was done was to get you used to ma-ai. It also had a secondary reason which was to be looked at as no different to atemi. Thus there are low points which can be 'attacked' and thus usually by your foot. I'm sure if you look these points up in the annuls of Aikido terminology you will come across them.

I was also taught that the movements tracing back through samurai times etc. would rule out much high kicking as there is nothing more tasty to a sword wielding samurai than a nice extended leg. So be it. Food for thought.

So in conclusion I would say there is no reason why you couldn't use your feet in such a way but it all depends when, why, and how. It wouldn't however be a primary part of Aikido.

...movements tracing back through samurai times etc. would rule out much high kicking as there is nothing more tasty to a sword wielding samurai than a nice extended leg....

As much as I like to kick, i would not kick high to a felon wielding a knife, a bat, or a knife, etc., and I've learn not to try that to amateur UFC MMA "fighters" either, or to anyone really a threat. Kick are good for feints or as closing the distance, esp,.when aimed low and hard, ex. round (mawahshi) shin kick to knee or a fast turn-back kick to groin. First you lean the tools than (hopefully) you learn when to incorporate.

Would be nice to find an Aikido dojo that can integrate some practical karate, that has the intensity and ernestness of MMA, but I know I am dreaming.

Last edited by Chris Evans : 10-25-2011 at 01:18 PM.

"The state that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools."

..."In the 1950s/60s all Kenshiro Abbe Sensei's Aikido classes began with 30mins hard kicking and punching exercises. and 200 pushups on the back of the wrists..."
...
200's push-up's pretty good, but on wrists! cool.

Quote:

Mark Freeman wrote:

I do know that at 80 years of age with 2 artificial hips and an artificial knee, both of which he puts down to the severity of the practice, he is not so inclined to agree with you that it is cool to wreck the one precious body we have unneccessarily, through overly hard training.

I've heard similar stories of martial artists who trained very hard when they were young, only to regret it as they grew older, because their joints sustained permanent damage from it, causing chronic diseases like arthritis later in life.

It's kind of ironic that training very hard to you protect yourself from violence may do more damage than you're likely to ever sustain from violence.

I've heard similar stories of martial artists who trained very hard when they were young, only to regret it as they grew older, because their joints sustained permanent damage from it, causing chronic diseases like arthritis later in life.

It's kind of ironic that training very hard to you protect yourself from violence may do more damage than you're likely to ever sustain from violence.

Well put. I call it bad training. Now lot's of people may feel I'm wrong there but so be it. It's been a source of interest and sometimes frustration over the years to watch a stream of people coming for advice on such things. The frustration is that they only learn in retrospect. We're all guilty of that to varying degrees.

For example we used to train without regard to our bodies (bad!), but were also taught striking drills in order that we could deliver a correct attack. In fact I still do these drills - especially with juniors.

Just one other thing; INMHO Aikido is a striking art in that as Tori we should always be in a position to strike Uke. The fact that we don't makes it Aiki DO rather than Aiki jutsu.

I learned my striking skills in a striking art. If you want to develop striking skills, look elsewhere than aikido. Look to a striking art where people actually strike, not where the theoretical possibility for striking exists -- it's the only way you will practice and develop proficiency at it.

I learned my striking skills in a striking art. If you want to develop striking skills, look elsewhere than aikido. Look to a striking art where people actually strike, not where the theoretical possibility for striking exists -- it's the only way you will practice and develop proficiency at it.

What's a striking art, anyways? Striking is basically just power exiting you and entering them, and in actuality, not just theoretically, that's everywhere in aikido. The problem is just that modern aikido seems to be teaching people how to collapse away from someone else, rather than generate power into them. In a way, that's half of what all the nonsense about internal strength is about lately, just learning to strike with any part of the body, be it your upper thigh or your hip or your fist. That's entering in a nutshell, and perhaps our art has lost the ability to teach this well at all. Maybe we are, as a community, prone to misinterpret the oft-quoted "aikido is X% atemi" in lowest-common-denominator fashion as to just mean nicking someone with your knuckles. It's just a sad state of affairs that now we must go outside of aikido to learn what was specifically there in the first place and then lost to who knows.

Lee, I agree with what you say about body mechanics, but if someone never gets out of the ivory tower, how effective do you think they will ever be in practice -- any practice? Being able to recite the company line about power and aiki and whatsis does not equate to being able to strike effectively. I know the way that karateka learn how to punch effectively, but I doubt that anyone within aikido would ever use those methods.

Lee, I agree with what you say about body mechanics, but if someone never gets out of the ivory tower, how effective do you think they will ever be in practice -- any practice? Being able to recite the company line about power and aiki and whatsis does not equate to being able to strike effectively. I know the way that karateka learn how to punch effectively, but I doubt that anyone within aikido would ever use those methods.

Yah, of course. You gotta test it in reality, the question is just with what? Learning to hit stuff with your fists can teach you a lot if you use it as an opportunity to learn how to get your whole body into your fist, or it can just teach you how to hit with a fist disconnected from your body. Learning to kick with the whole body behind the leg is also extremely valuable and can teach you a lot about how to simply just walk with power behind your steps rather than the standard shift balance forward way.

But, on the other hand, does it have to be an arm or a leg? Wasn't O'Sensei really fond of stabbing his jo into trees and what-not? Learning to drive power down the shaft of a spear would seem like it has a lot in common with driving power into the shaft of one's forearm and one's fist (or one's leg). Certain sorts of strikes like shomen or yokomen with jo or bokken also might have a lot in relation to the action of the reciprocal sides of the body acting to generate punches or strikes (could be viewed as rotation or counter-extension, whatever flavor floats your boat). At least in the pole-shaking training I have been shown, the mechanics are extremely similar.

I would thus think weapons training could also allow one to test the effectiveness of one's coordination if you are testing against real targets/resistance and not just swatting at the air. But when it comes to weapons training, I am really ignorant about higher level aspects of it since it was absent in just about all of the aikido passed down to me or when present just the wacky-sticks variety, and what I can do is sort of brutishly reverse engineered from learning how to punch or kick effectively.

it's fine with kicking and punching, but what about screaming? nobody mentioned anything about screaming. just wanted to note that i was the first one who mentioned here about SCREAMING. i mean...and i mean. i sit here on the bench reading aikiweb and nothing on screaming. aikido could use good screaming. we should just scream "KILL! KILL! " along with jumping up and down. i think it would do us some good.

*for those who didn't understand the reference, go search on Alice's Restaurant and Arlo*

Hmmm...
My first aikido teacher, one Yoshimura Sensei in Nagoya, had a set tanto-dori technique for shodan grading. Part of it included delivering a mawashi-geri to the attacker as you entered.

Kobayshi Sensei demonstrated omote ikkyo from shomen-uchi, delivering a kick to the face of the attacker at the completion of kuzushi, or raking the leg (variation of a kick)

And plenty of sempai have told me as uke to "keep your free hand ready to block the strike" (a lesson not forgotten after the strike came) or to "move out of range".

The punches and kicks are in there ("Hidden in plain sight?"), but most aikido teaching methodology wants to focus on not using excessive strength, non-resistance, taisabaki etc., to which powerful striking is seen as counter-productive.

I remember being tasked to "deal with" a couple of new students - former boxing students - who just wanted to stand there and use brute strength. On tenchi-nage, one of them was successfuly defeating my efforts to throw him, but I pointed out that I was in a perfect position to git him a good head-butt,

Tori - watch for openings, and use atemi to create openings, and watch out for strikes.
Uke - keep tori on their toes by striking when they are open, and watch out for strikes yourself.

Warning: Do not bend, fold or otherwise abuse... until we get to the dojo..